Celebrations

The Christmas season has been great for us so far. We've attended a couple of really fun parties with our unschooling friends. One involved an insane cookie exchange, jumping on the trampoline in the rain and lots of High School Musical (Charis' new favorite). The other was a raw dessert making party - yeah! My good friend Ginger arranged it, and we had such a lovely time of not-cooking, eating, laughing and relating with each other. I really like those girls!

My parents invited us to go to their church's Christmas program.It involved lots of Christmas carol singing. Everytime Charis knew one of the songs she looked at me excitedly and whispered (really loud) "I know this one!"  She hasn't figured out yet that there are only 10 carols that get recycled every year. This first picture is waiting for the program to start.

After the program they had set up this elaborate village they called "Christmasville". Every little house front had a carnival game to play with a candy reward. It was like Halloween all over again. There was even snow falling the entire time. Kinda insane, but the kids loved it. Charis got a reindeer painted on her face.

And, classic thing to happen, Paxton was chosen to help with the magic show. This magician was hilarious, and Pax was pretty confused. He had him take off his shoes and socks (which Pax was not too sure about) and finally found the missing handkerchief in his shoe. 

We had an early Xmas celebration with Caleb's uncle and aunt. They got a bunch of fun little gifts -the kinds I don't buy for them. So, I don't have to feel bad for saying no to those things anymore. Here is a picture of Jonas walking his dog. 

 

Caleb and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary December 18th. It was a great night. Luckily we had stayed up late the night before talking through a big "issue" we were having. So date night was cleared up to just enjoy each other. We went to dinner in Del Mar at a yummy restaurant called Paradise Grill. Then saw an amazing movie, "Slumdog Millionaire". Caleb says its his new favorite movie (which is not easily proclaimed). I highly recommend seeing it. It takes place in India and is about a poor kid who makes it on India's version of "So you want to be a Millionaire". It is primarily a love story, but interwoven with the horrors of India, brotherly relations, and destiny's pull. The filming is really creative and I loved the soundtrack.   
Im really really happy to be married to Caleb. Its been overwhelmingly clear to me the last few years that God made us perfect for each other. We have both learned so much from our relationship and become more full people because of it. And, best of all, we still really like each other.  I still think he's super cute and funny. And want to hang out with him more than anyone else. I feel thankful to have been married to him these past 9 years.

Gift tags

Caleb's work had a craft day last week. Employees were encouraged to bring homemade gifts to sell and everyone was invited to come purchase. Caleb asked if Charis could bring something and they agreed. She was really excited to have a place to sell some of her stuff. She makes things all the time and often has elaborate plans of how she's going to sell them (involving knocking on all the neighbor's doors or something like that). So this was a perfect opportunity.

Once we settled on making gift tags for Christmas presents we got to work. I did the cutting and gluing, and she did the coloring and designing. It was a really fun project to do together and they turned out awesome. She was really nervous that no one was going to buy them. And I was too when she was planning to charge $5 per tag. But she was okay with 2 tags for $1.

Everyone loved her and her tags. She made over $20! She spent some of it right away on other people's crafts and then spent most of the rest on a new video game (Cooking Mama).

I think we will be doing more of this in the future.

Things we'll miss about Fallbrook

Good friends

Our fun yard, especially the fruit



These pics are from one of our last days in Fallbrook

Life is slower there.  Less traffic. More fruit trees. We'll miss things about it.

But I'm happy to be home.

THREES

Me @ 3 months old.



Me @ 3 years. (It's okay to laugh - I do, after I cry about it. I blame my mom for this one. You don't put the chubby kid in a high necked moo-moo.)

Me @ 33.

Happy Birthday Jonas

Belated Halloween & Last Soccer Game

I'm getting caught-up on my posts. Hopefully I'll get a little video up in the next couple of days of Jonas' 3rd birthday.  

Our halloween was quite fun.  The kid's all had special costumes this year. Paxton got an outfit from the Disney store; he looked so handsome as Prince Caspian (from the Narnia series).

Charis wore a "little red riding hood" costume my mom made for me when I was her age. 

And Jonas was a bear. So cute. My mom made that costume for my older brother when he was Jonas' age. So it's about 37 years old.

My kids put up these hilarious home-made halloween decorations around the house. This first picture of Pax posing by a ghost kills me.

Then of course, no halloween is complete without a couple of zombies in the house...

Our day started with a Halloween lunch party with our book club friends. 

One of the little girls had organized tons of games that she beautifully orchestrated. I was so impressed with her kind leadership abilities at the age of 9. All the kids had so much fun. The night of Halloween we attended another party with our unschooling friends. You can see the pictures here. Ginger hosted and did an incredible job with homemade bean bags for games, personalized glasses for everyone, hand made spiders, pumpkin pie and more.

Pax finished his first season of soccer. Not to be his last I'm sure. He really enjoyed being a part of the "Fireflys". 
We loved his coach. She kept the practices fun and low key. I never heard her yell at a kid or shame anyone. She was only encouraging. That was so perfect for Paxton.

He made his first goal on the last game! It was so cool to watch him improve over the season. He began timid and scared of the ball. And became much more confident and bold by the end. He got the "most improved" award.

I love this picture of him on the sidelines with his little friend Ethan. This is such a Pax face.

FAMILY

I started this post a week a go. Since then, SO much has happened.  I'm tempted to delete this and just write about the more recent stuff (like Bates Nut Farm, Jonas' bday, Legoland, and Halloween just to name a few). I had witty and interesting commentary planned for each of these photos, but you'll just have to make up your own commentary...

mom + sisters

good friends at the James concert at House of Blues

love this pic

my awesome family celebrating Chris' 21st bday

pig racing @ the pumpkin patch

my beautiful mother-in-law and cute husband

best friends forever (the Brent's kids)

a Jr. High visit

Caleb's best friend from Jr. High contacted him recently. It'd been about 10 years since they had talked but apparently that didn't matter. Because, before I knew it, him and his wife and 3 kids were road-tripping down from Seattle to stay at our house for a week. 

I was a little unsure about the success of such a visit. Would they still be BFFs? would I get along with his wife? would they mind our weird lifestyle? how about the fact that they'd all have to sleep in one bedroom? I settled on the notion that they must be low-key people if they were willing to do such a trip at all. 

I'm happy to report that we are all now BFFs. We all got along surprisingly well. Our families meshed perfectly.  The guys have so much in common it's creepy. Even down to random things like hating mayonnaise and vinegar.  They have started 2 business projects together already (did I mention their mind's think alike) and have plans for us to all live together by the beach some day.  

Caleb took a day off work and we went to Legoland together. I thought this picture was cool...

All of their kids are adorable. It was fun to live with other kids for a while. Their "middle child" is one of the funniest kid's I've ever met. We're still saying things he said, like, "where's my cute guy dad?" (Hear this said with a raspy 2 year old voice, as he refers to his new, large-eyed stuffed animal.)

Their baby is too cute. She ate sand for the first time at Moonlight Beach! It was a proud moment for us all.


I'm so glad they were able to come, and that our visit only vaguely resembled Jr. High. We are definitely hoping to visit them in the near future.

my middle child

We try hard to avoid the middle child issues with Pax, but he kinda fits the stereotype. It's intensified by the fact that Charis is the classic first child and Jonas the stereotypical baby. Paxton has the most easy going, un-opinionated personality; so the other two get heard more. But its been cool to see him grow in this. I hear Charis talking him into things (all the time) but I also hear pax saying "no!" a lot more. Sometimes I want to scream at him to "hurry up" (with charis it's "slow down") but when he wants to cuddle and kiss I don't mind the slowness.



He is the classic example of a kid who needs positive affirmation. and lots of it. He cannot function if he feels we are angry with him. he completely shuts down. And simple tasks become impossible for him. Until realizing this, we weren't big fans of the positive affirmation method. Charis and Jonas don't respond to it (overly positive talk). But Pax lives for it. ("Pax, you can do it! You can put on your socks all by yourself. You are good at it!!)

His soccer team, the Dragonflies, has been such a good experience for him. He seems to really like having an activity that only he does. Until now he's never wanted to do a class or anything apart from Charis. It's really cute to see him be an important member of this little 5 year old team.  I feel like he's grown up so much in the past month.




He lost his first tooth this week. Bottom middle. He was working it for so long and it finally came out (after so much wiggling) and thats it. There's been no more mention of it. We keep forgetting about the tooth fairy thing. Ooops! Tonight she (he?) will appear.

I love my middle child.